


Men Sell Not Such In Any Town

by Edonohana



Category: Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, Fruit, Obsession, alien fruit descriptions, canon-typical levels of incestuous desire, time dilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 05:16:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16111613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: I have fruit that shatters like glass and fruit that must be spooned up like pudding, fruit that tastes like caramel and fruit that tastes like roasted meat, fruit that glitters and fruit so translucent you can see your fingers through it and fruit that glows golden at twilight, fruit like silver coins and monstrous hands and autumn fog, fruit that loses all its flavor unless you eat it straight off the tree as it tries to coil around your tongue.





	Men Sell Not Such In Any Town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/gifts).



> This story contains incestuous longing and desire, but no actual incest.

Are you out there, Laura? 

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please come back to me. It’s your Lizzie calling. I love you. Come home.

I wake up every cycle regretting how I betrayed you. But I was so young then. I didn’t understand what I do now. Laura, if you’re listening, can I explain? 

Do you remember how innocent they tried to keep us? Our world was changing so quickly; maybe that’s why. I remember that they called the aliens goblins, and claimed their food was poisonous to humans. You and I were old enough to know that was nonsense. It wasn’t digestible or nourishing, true, but it wasn’t poison. 

I remember those alien fruits. So luscious and plump, so sweet-smelling, so juicy. I remember the colors, as bright as jewels. When they pushed the fruits into my face until they burst and I was soaked head to foot in honey, I wanted more than anything to open my mouth and taste them. The scent was so intoxicating, it almost drove me mad with frustration as I made my way home to you. The only reason I didn’t lick myself clean is that I was saving the juice for you.

Would you believe me if I said I hadn’t thought that through? I swear, I hadn’t. I pictured your tongue lapping like a kitten’s. It was that innocent. But when you smelled the juice on me, when you came toward me with your lips parted, your face flushed, breathing hard, looking so _hungry_ , I understood that there is more than one kind of hunger.

I was frightened, not disgusted. And what I was frightened of wasn’t you. It was that I would enjoy the feeling of your tongue on my body. I was already imagining stripping off my clothes to give you access to every bit of my skin, all soaked in fragrant juices. For the first time, I understood the all-consuming desire that you felt for those fruits. I felt it for you.

That’s why I ran. I hated myself for it when I came back, dripping now with river water, and found you gone. I finally traced you to a ship bound for the far edges of the galaxy. So I boarded another.

I never found those fruits you devoured so long ago, those fruits that ran sticky liquid all over my body. I never learned what they were called or where they came from. They are not native to the planet of the T'Hylee, our "goblins," where no fruit grows at all. Isn't that strange? 

Laura, have you found those fruits?

I’ve flown so long in your traces, my sister, but always a lightyear behind. Have you ever heard my broadcasts? Space is so vast, it’s impossible to monitor every frequency. When I cycle through them, picking up snatches of news and distress calls and requests for services and offers of labor, sometimes I imagine for the briefest, most heart-stopping instant that I hear your voice. Have you ever called for me? “Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie, come in…”

So many Earth-years have passed now, Laura. Have you ever gone back? I have. I didn’t recognize our town or anyone in it. When I asked for the place we used to live, everyone shook their heads or gave me strange looks. Finally I found it in a historical record. Everything we ever knew is hundreds of years gone. Time spun like a top, and we sat at the table and watched the colors blur. 

I keep a mirror in my living quarters. When I look at it, I imagine I’m looking at you. You’re still so beautiful. Last night I found a single white strand. I decided to keep it. It looks like a fleck of fruit-sugar in your hair.

I’ve named my ship _The Goblin Fruit_. I keep a small living quarters for myself, and a smaller control room. The rest of the ship is devoted to my garden. On every world I ask about the most tempting, most delectable, most prized of all fruits. I stay long enough to learn to nurture them, and then I take with me a full-grown, already fruiting tree or bush or vine or waterweed or stone or fungus or drifting cloud. 

Shall I tell you about some of my fruits, Laura?

The folk of Softly The Rain Falls On The Moss have a fruit they call mother's milk. It's a purplish vine with the bruise-blue fruits growing directly from the stem. The fruit itself is inedible, but when they ripen, a translucent liquid wells up from them. You can sit beneath the vines and lap and lick and suck at the fruits. The natives of the planet are mammalian; their own milk exudes from a thick patch of skin, so the fruit is well-named from their perspective. The juice of mother's milk is thick and sweet as honey, with a tart aftertaste. One could easily while away a day sucking and licking for that hard-won nectar. 

The fruit called tan-yan, I found on the larger moon of Alcyon V. It grows on a slender, leafless trunk that bows over with the weight of the single fruit. When you pluck it, the trunk snaps upward and cracks like a whip. It is filled with bite-sized squares the texture of firm custard, each covered in a paper-like membrane. The flesh is deep burgundy, scented faintly of roses, and tastes like raspberries soaked in wine. 

The false flower I took from Tanya’s World. It looks like a pink-and-purple orchid and has a floral scent, but the “petals” and “stamen” are thick and filled with sweet juice. Its seeds, which are tiny as a pinprick, must be eaten by a certain rodent in order to be fertilized. The rodent is extremely fond of the pollen of the flowers of a different plant, so the fruit grows in a shape and color similar enough to trick the pollen-carrying insects into visiting it, and so tricks the rodent into eating it. You must eat the false flower carefully, for even a hard exhale will blow away the pearly dusting of pollen. Without the salty, savory pollen, the fruit is cloyingly sweet.

I have fruit that shatters like glass and fruit that must be spooned up like pudding, fruit the texture of cotton candy and fruit with a hard shell you must bite a hole in to suck out the syrup, fruit that tastes like caramel and fruit that tastes like roasted meat, fruit that glitters and fruit so translucent you can see your fingers through it and fruit that glows golden at twilight, bland fruit that gives pleasant hallucinations and delicious fruit that causes screaming nightmares, fruit like silver coins and monstrous hands and autumn fog, fruit that loses all its flavor unless you eat it straight off the tree as it tries to coil around your tongue. 

My latest find is from A [click three] Sal [tone nine] A [click one]. It’s a slime-mold, but quite a pretty one, like a shiny pink carpet. The fruiting bodies grow as bumps beneath the surface, and are ready to eat when they pop through and float atop the pink. They’re the size of a walnut but smooth and perfectly round, and so black that they look like holes in space. If you place one on your tongue and close your lips over it, the heat melts its fragile skin and it dissolves into fizzy liquid. Whenever I eat one, I think of putting my lips against yours and passing you a mouthful of bubbling juice. 

I tasted the juice of the goblin fruits before I threw myself in the river, so many years ago. I opened my mouth as I fell. I wonder, did it taste like you? 

Oh Laura, my Laura, you can love me, you can kiss me, you can suck my honey sweet. We have outlived our world and all its laws. I have made for us an Eden all of alien fruit. Within lies no serpent and no goblins, nor is it guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. There will be only the fruit and me and you, my sister, my Laura, my sweetest, sweetest love.


End file.
